


A Year in Tropes

by roguesgallery



Category: Russian Doll (TV 2019)
Genre: Bodyswap, Canadian pastoral dreams, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Holidays, Invisibility, Platonic sexy times, Zombies, canon typical language, musical theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21867610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguesgallery/pseuds/roguesgallery
Summary: Fairies, Zombies, Bodyswaping, Mutant Powers, New Yorkers bursting into choreographed song and dance routines. This is just their lives now.aka Tropes are Dangerous. Use the Buddy System.
Relationships: Nadia Vulvokov & Alan Zaveri
Comments: 9
Kudos: 45
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Year in Tropes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirigibleplumbing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleplumbing/gifts).



> The actual date of Alan & Nadia's Birthdays has eluded my research so I'm going with the starting of filming - Feb 22. This story takes place after Season 1. Thanks for the prompt, dirigibleplumbing, I hope it fits the bill.

**Mardi Gras - March 5**

“Fuck.”

“Fuck.” Nadia agreed. She didn’t so much sit on his couch, as collapse into it. She half-heartedly raised a hand to brush a streamer out of her face. It flopped back. She tried to blow it away and then gave up. “The weird shit is not over.”

“Definitely not.” Alan wasn’t spiralling yet, just reciting facts in a bland grocery list type of voice.

“It beats dying, doesn’t it?”

Alan turned to face her. His face was doing something truly impossible. Like someone took all the angst and embarrassment of high school and made it into a facial expression. “Does it?”

“Come on!” She shook his shoulder. Glitter rained down. Oh, he was never getting that out of his couch. “Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy the lesbians trying to build a float Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Style.”

“I danced.” He said mournfully.

“And sang.” She added. “You were good! Not as good as those Private school brats doing Ladies Who Lunch, but it was a very credible cover of Mr. Cellophane. Look how many beads you have! I’d have to show my tits to get that many necklaces.”

He did seem a bit mollified by that. They sat in silence. She was sure Alan was thinking something deep about what it all meant. Time loops, now the East Village going all Lin Manuel Miranda? She was just trying to build up the energy to find her cigarettes.

“You were good too.” He said suddenly.

“What?”

“With all the-” He waved at her feet. “Tapping and all."

“Thanks. My grandmother was obsessed with that movie with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines. And I look fucking hot in a top hat and tails. Hey, where did my hat go?”

“You gave it the barista doing Judy Garland.”

“Oh yeah.”

He heaved himself off the couch. His beads jingled. “Shower?”

“Nah.” She curled up in his empty spot. The couch was already a confetti and glitter impressionist piece. She could only add to its sparkling beauty. Her eyes closed instantly.

Alan removed her shoes and covered her with a blanket. Nadia fell asleep to him humming Get Happy.

* * *

**St Patrick’s Day - March 17**

Nadia ran into shop still ranting. He didn’t know how someone with a pack a day habit could have that kind of lung capacity. She must be made of nicotine and irony at this point. He just knew she would turn out to be one of those 116 year old ladies who credited her longevity to alcohol and never getting married. “You don’t understand, I already hated St. Patrick’s Day. Wall Street Bros in “Kiss Me, I’m Irish shirts? That whole pinching someone if they aren’t wearing green? It’s fucking barbaric! And green beer! Fucking green beer? What kind of blasmephy are we getting into here? Are we pretending we’ve all been poisoned by arsenic? Ergot? What?”

“LSD would be my guess.” Alan slammed the Bodega door behind him, turning the deadbolt with a satisfying thunk. “Do you think this is iron?” She shrugged. “Get the milk!” The lights were getting closer.

“Yeah, yeah.” He heard the cooler door close. “Do you think a snack pack would count as bread? I think the fucking fairy and leprechauns disrupted the delievery schedule.” She threw him the package, already filling Oatmeal’s bowl with milk. “It has crackers in it.”

“I don’t know! You know this stuff, not me!”

“From a shitty urban fantasy game I worked on in 2005. I’m not Irish!” She skidded to a stop beside him, milk splattering on the floor. The lights were brighter. They reminded Alan of a video he had seen once of ball lightning. They locked eyes. He slid back the deadbolt. They waited for a beat. He was starting to hear the music. That was Not Good. He pulled his woolen beanie over his ears and swung open the door. Nadia placed the crackers and milk on the ground outside the store, still talking. He couldn’t hear her but he could hear the music. Flutes and bells and the voices, the beautiful unearthly voices…

He took a step towards the lights.

A hand with short, sharp nails pulled him roughly backwards. The door closed. He tried to open it. Something was trying to stop him but he was bigger and the music was everywhere now. It filled his ears. It filled his goddamn throat. He was going to drown without it. Something jumped on his back, warm breath against his ear. “Do you know how hard it is to be a redhead on St. Patrick’s Day? You may as well wear a shirt that says ‘Free Blow Jobs and oh yeah, I shit gold and rainbows’. I only wore black so my ass was bruised with pinches by the end of the night. When I was in college I thought about dying my hair. Very late 90s Goth, I know, but then the carpets wouldn’t match the drapes-”

He laughed and suddenly he was Alan again and the speaker was Nadia and he was giving her a non-consensual piggyback ride and he couldn’t stop laughing. He laughed so hard he shook her right off. She looked so offended to find herself on the ground, like a cat who didn’t land on her feet, that he laughed harder. Hysterical but free. The music was a distant memory now and when the clock hit twelve he was going to give Nadia a piggy back ride home whether she agreed or not.

* * *

**Passover/Easter - April 22**

Alan threw her a clip and she rammed it home. Another perfect headshot. “Yes! Right in the MAGA hat!”

Alan covered her back, machete at the ready. They were trying to make it to Ruth’s. The lady was a good shot, Nadia’s abdomen could attest to that, but she really wasn’t up on Zombie popular culture. She may not know the rules.

“At your six.”

Another shot. Gorgeous. Alan finished off a crawler coming out of sidewalk cellar door. Fuck those things. A kid zipped by on his skateboard, baseball bat in hand. “Video games ARE educational, motherfucker!” His swing and speed almost decapitated a shambling ex-jogger.

“Preach!” Nadia called after him.

They made it another block without seeing any dead. They seemed to mostly be coming from Uptown. Typical. They took a moment to catch their breath.

“I was betting on zombies for Halloween.” Alan said.

“Nah, you goyim caused this.”

“What? Passover is pretty bloody.”

“Sure, sure, but we didn’t fuck with the undead. That was all Jesus. That’s your team.” A moaning came from the next block. It sounded hungry.

“You good to go?”

“As long as we don’t get any Synder zombies, I could do this for days.”

Nadia nodded solemnly. “Romero.” She put out her fist. He bumped it lightly with his free hand.

“Romero.” Alan agreed.

They went into battle.

* * *

**Canada Day - July 1st**

“I was really hoping.”

“I know you were.”

“I mean, I’m not Canadian. You’re not Canadian. I’m not even one of the assholes who said I was going to move to Canada if Trump won and then had to eat their words because then they’d have to be _Canadian_. I’m a New Yorker. Born and bred.”

“I know.”

“I just thought this might have been my chance. My great pastoral Canadian romance.”

“I know.”

“Puffed sleeves. Scandals over bangs. Perhaps some consumption but only the really pretty kind. Oh, OH! Or I could think I was dying and ask a gorgeous man with a dark past to marry me. He would accept my dying request. Then I’d find out I wasn’t dying and think I had trapped him into a loveless marriage but it turned out he had fallen in love with me and love turned me gorgeous and he painted my picture-”

“Now you are just messing with me. Is that really a plot?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, okay, stop hitting me.”

“I just wanted to hit someone over the head with a slate.”

“I know, have another drink.”

“You are my kindred spirit.”

“Thanks?”

“I was talking to the alcohol.”

“Maybe you should have some water.”

* * *

**Women's Equality Day - Aug 26**

A shrill ringing woke Nadia up. “What the fuck.” She rolled over reaching for her phone, eyes still closed. It wasn’t on her bedside table. She cracked an eye open. That wasn’t her bedside table. That wasn’t her arm. She groped at her face. That wasn’t her fucking face. She threw the blankets off. That definitely wasn’t her fucking dick, half hard in the morning light.

The phone began to ring again. How Alan managed to make a ringtone sound anxious she would never know. Shit, she didn’t know his passcode. Oh, yeah, she was currently wearing his fingerprints. She answered the phone.

“Nadia? Is that you?” A low female voice, somewhere between Carrie Fisher and Kathleen Turner, asked.

“Is that really what I sound like?”

“Oh, thank god.”

“I mean, I’m digging it. That is a voice of a woman who has truly lived. She’s got some mileage you know? Broken some hearts, seen some shit.”

“Nadia, focus.”

“It’s an acquired taste, like a good whiskey. Should I do a spoken word record? Not a podcast but like a Henry Rollins, Leonard Cohen sort of shit. Hey, is Tom Waits still alive?”

“Nadia. I have a vagina.”

“Yes Alan,” She said with what she thought was admirable patience. “and I have a dick.”

“Why do I have a vagina?!?”

Nadia winced. Her voice and Alan’s incipient panic attack did not go together. She needed to nip this in the bud.

“We should have sex.”

A pause. Yep, that had derailed him. “What?”

“Seriously. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. See how the other half lives.”

“I don’t know what to do with a vagina!!!”

Nadia swallowed about ten thousand retorts. She was such a good fucking friend. “But I do. And you know this body better than anyone else, obviously.” She ran an appreciative hand over her/his stomach. Alan’s rigid adherence to routine did give him very nice abs. His dick was still half hard and it twitched as she rubbed the sparse hair above his boxers. “Do I need to pee or jerk off? It’s kinda hard to tell.”

Alan sighed. “Both probably. Look, Nadia, your my best friend. I don’t know if having sex-”

“Don’t think of it as sex. Think of it as guided masturbation.”

Silence.

She pulled out the big guns. “Multiple orgasms…”

Silence but the feeling of it had changed. She grinned. “Bring the purple shoebox under my bed.” She hung up.

* * *

**Christmas - December 25th**

“Do you have the sheets?”

“Yes.”

“And the chains?”

“Yes. It is very easy to steal stuff when you are invisible. Can I ask why?”

“Because we are going to Jacob Morley some assholes. Or Scrooge them, if you prefer Bill Murray to Dickens.”

“I like the Muppets.”

“Very valid choice.”

“So, who?”

“I was thinking Woody Allen. Weinstein, definitely. You got ideas?”

“Shhh, I’m google mapping Lehman Brothers.”

“Nice. Let’s go jump the subway turnstiles.”

* * *

**New Years Eve - Dec 31**

“Are you ready for this?” Nadia stamped her feet to keep warm. They were standing on the roof of Alan’s building. Ruth could probably explain why Alan wanted to start the new year at the site of his first disastrous loop death but Nadia was just going to go with it.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” He smiled weakly. The street was strangely quiet. Everyone was in midtown or in front of the TV, she guessed.

“Haha. Very funny. I’d say don’t tempt fate but fate obviously has our nuts in its proverbial fist.”

“Exactly. Exactly!” He nodded repeatedly, hugging himself against the cold. “We have no control but its not random. It _means_ something.”

“Yeah, yeah “God does not play dice with the universe, yadda, yadda.”

He stared intently at her. “Doesn’t that comfort you?”

She shrugged. She should have worn a scarf. “I’m a little pissed actually. Being a Jewish atheist was kinda of my thing. I’m just glad the all knowing whatever decided the buddy system is where it’s at.”

Alan smiled. His real boyish smile that made Nadia wish they had known each other when they were kids. She could have gotten him to make all the age appropriate bad decisions and when things with her mom got bad she could have slept on his floor in a warm, clean sleeping bag he kept just for her. She would have definitely kicked his ass in Street Fighter and he would have made sure she had lunch. She pulled at his arm and took his gloved hand between her hands. A chorus came from throughout the city.

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6,” She squeezed his hand and he pressed his shoulder against hers. It blocked the wind a little. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

The fireworks started.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Remember - comments are almost as delicious as tropes and much safer.


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